


Only a Model

by Las



Category: Merlin (BBC)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Movie Fusion, Comedy, Crack, Gen, Parody
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-23
Updated: 2009-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-05 01:32:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/36319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Las/pseuds/Las
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Let's not go to Camelot. It's a silly place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only a Model

**Author's Note:**

> With apologies to Monty Python.

"Father, I'd like to talk to you about the knights' recent behaviour," Arthur says one night over a postprandial brandy.

"Yes, rather. I've been quite worried about them myself."

"I can't make them stop dancing."

"Have you threatened them with a night in the dungeons?"

"I've even threatened them with the stocks."

"What did they say to that?"

"They just ate spam at me."

"Disgraceful."

"Which reminds me: Merlin caught Percival filching ham and jam from the pantry again."

Uther just sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose, the very picture of a king with the world weighing on his shoulders.

"I told him this is hardly conduct worthy of a knight," Arthur continues, "and do you know what he said? He said, 'Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.'"

"We'll have to make him push the pram again," Uther muses. "That will teach him."

Arthur hesitates. "I think we may have to resort to more drastic measures than the pram."

"Hmm. You may be right. What has become of Camelot?" the king wonders aloud.

"At least we're not like those Gauls across the way, with their cowtapults and their baseless insults."

"I suppose."

"And for the record, Father, I don't think you smell like elderberries at all."

"Thank you, son."

+

Morgana doesn't weigh the same as a duck, but the crowd takes this to mean that if she weighs the same as several ducks, then she must be several times a witch.

The problem with trying to weigh several ducks at once is that you can't. Ducks squawk and flap their wings and generally don't take too kindly to being jammed into a basket filled with other ducks. They will generally peck out your eyes and run away. Morgana can relate to that, at least. This endeavor has been going on for forty-five minutes now. Those who own ducks are beginning to hesitate before volunteering them for the weighing scale; no one wants to lose their poultry.

"Can we use something else that weighs the same as a duck?" asks someone in the crowd. "Like maybe two pillows? Or a large encyclopedia?"

Morgana is beginning to wish she really can turn them all into newts.

+

"They won't tell us to do something we can't do," Arthur insists. "They're knights after all."

"Of a sort," Merlin adds dubiously.

"Look, I think the trunk is starting to give," says Arthur, and gives the tree another mighty smack with the herring.

+

The corpse collector calls out, "Bring out your dead!"

"Hold on!" Hunith exclaims, bustling over. "I've got one!"

"Mother!" Merlin yells, running after her. "Stop that! Will isn't dead!"

"What?" Hunith shakes the urn in his face. "What do you call this then?"

Merlin thinks about it for a moment. "He's just resting."

"In peace." She holds out a handful of coins to the collector. "Ninepence, there you go."

"There!" Merlin crows. "He moved!"

"No, he didn't! You just grabbed the urn and shook it!"

"I never!" he gasps. "Look!"

"You just shook it again!"

"Naw, he was just about to wake up. You just stunned him!"

Hunith eyeballs her son. "I stunned him?"

"Yeah, and now he's out again. Stuns easily, does our Will. Remarkable boy, isn't he? Lovely plumage."

"What?"

"Look, I've got to be at the Robinsons' at half-past," says the collector. "The pox descended on them and I'm liable to make a killing, harharhar."

"Will's just resting!" Merlin insists. "He's just tired after a prolonged bout of being an ass!"

"All right, then," says Hunith. "If he's resting, I'll just wake him up!" She raps on the urn with her knuckles. "Hello, William! Rise and shine, lad, I've got a nice lovely royal personage for you to take your resentment out on! Full of entitlement, just like you like 'em! He'll stir up your past trauma good and proper!"

The urn remains stubbornly quiet.

"He's probably just pining," Merlin offers.

"Pining for what?" Hunith demands.

"For... the fjords?"

Hunith and the collector stare at Merlin. Then the collector whacks him on the head with a club.

"Thanks," says Hunith as Merlin keels over.

"You're welcome," says the collector affably. "They do get rather attached sometimes, don't they?"

"Ah, he'll just find some other prat to attach himself to, mark my words."

+

"None shall pass," the Black Knight intones.

"...All right," says Arthur, and buggers off. He's learned his lesson.

+

"So which do you think sounds better?" Merlin asks Gaius. "The clippity-cloppity-clippity?" He bangs the coconut shells in demonstration. "Or just the clip-clop-clip-clop?" He demonstrates this too.

Gaius just rolls his eyes and goes back to figuring out how sheep's bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes.


End file.
